STR. Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Townprzetargi.adm.uj.edu.pl/pliki_z_formularza/zalacznik4522.pdf · Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Town. ... Standing atop its short minaret

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Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Town

F R O M T H E A I R , few mosques compete in size with the mosque of Ibn

Tulun, but the mosque of al-Hakim, originally named al-Anwar, or the

illuminated, stands out for its size and its expansive interior courtyard.

The mosque, located inside the northern gates of Cairo, was built by its

namesake, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim. Standing atop its short minaret

today and looking south, one can see the elegant minarets of the al-Azhar

mosque, where the Sunni faithful continue to pray a millennium after its

founding. Al-Azhar, at its height, was the greatest institution of Islamic

learning in the Middle East. During Fatimid times, the mosque became the

first Shi’ite mosque in Egypt and the headquarters of Shi’a Islam.1 Further

south, one can also see the twin minarets of the mosque of al-Mu’ayyad

built above Bab Zuwayla, or Zuwayla Gate, which had often been used

as the gallows for captives and rebellious Mamluks. During the Fatimid

period the gate connected the new town to the older city of Fustat, where

much of the population resided.

On the horizon are the minarets of the Ibn Tulun and ‘Amr mosques,

which are obscured behind more-recent developments. These minarets

mark the two cities that preceded Fatimid Cairo: al-Qata‘i and Fustat. Still

looking south, only a couple of hundred yards away and completely hidden

from sight, lies the revamped mosque of al-Aqmar. Half of its façade was

rebuilt at the end of the twentieth century to match the other half from

an earlier Fatimid time. Looking north, one can see a slumlike settlement

situated in an area that had been used as a cemetery until a few centuries

ago. During Fatimid times, these were fields that provided much of the

daily needs of the city. Looking below the minaret in the same direction,

Cairo final pages.indd 55 1/20/11 2:09 PM

PUBLIKACJA OBJĘTA PRAWEM AUTORSKIM. KOPIOWANIE I ROZPOWSZECHNIANIE ZABRONIONE. KOPIA WYŁĄCZNIE DO UŻYTKU NA POTRZEBY PRZETARGU CRZP/UJ/163/2015

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56 Cairo: Histories of a City

one can see Bab al-Futuh, or Conquest Gate, and Bab al-Nasr, or Victory

Gate, which were built during Fatimid times and give Cairo its distinc-

tive silhouette. All of these structures become important sites as our story

turns to Fatimid Cairo. Indeed, they serve as a stage for some of the most

important moments of the city’s millennial history. But that is a long story,

and this chapter will attempt to describe only its first two centuries.

Today, if one were to descend the minaret to enter the al-Hakim

mosque during prayer time, one would be surprised by the uniformity of

dress among the majority of believers there: moustached, bearded men in

white skullcaps donned in long white shirts over white trousers. Yet both

the dress code and the mosque’s interior are relatively new additions to

Cairo’s landscape of piety. If one were to enter the mosque during the

festival of Ashura, commemorated by Shi’ites as a day of mourning for

the martyrdom of Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet,

one might come across the same community of believers performing

important Shi’ite rituals. Yet if one had visited the same location some

forty years ago, the space would have been mere dilapidated ruins partly

repurposed as a local primary school standing behind a vegetable market

specializing in onions. It was only with the arrival of the Dawoodi Bohra

Ismaili community that this milieu changed and gleaming white marble

and gold trim were introduced.2

The Bohras are practicing Shi’ites who reside primarily in India and

had returned to Cairo almost a thousand years after their supposed

predecessors, the Fatimids, built the city, which they called al-Qahira.

The Bohras came as families dedicated to the mission of reviving this

city—which we will refer to from now on as Fatimid Cairo—and began

their work by rebuilding its mosques. Eight miles east, in the plush neigh-

borhood of Mohandeseen, there is a palace designed as a strange eclectic

mix of Islamic styles that demonstrates this desire to re-create a distant

past. It is the palatial home of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the head

of the Bohra community.

Little attention had been paid to the restoration of Islamic monuments

in Cairo until 1979, when an application was successfully submitted to

the World Heritage Commission to declare “Medieval Cairo” a World



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57Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Town

Heritage site. Around the same time, the Bohras secured a concession to

restore several Fatimid-era monuments. The Bohra leaders were looking

for ways to strengthen their community and anchor it in place, and they

decided it was time to return west, to Fatimid Cairo. As many families

relocated to Egypt to realize this plan, the Dawoodi Bohra leader issued

several pronouncements setting out behavior guidelines for all observant

Bohras. In particular, he announced a firman that set a dress code for both

men and women during Ashura observances in Cairo in 1981. He also

announced a major campaign to restore Fatimid architecture in Cairo

to encourage ziyaret, a special pilgrimage that is meant to maintain the

social cohesion of Bohra communities scattered over several continents.

The restoration of Fatimid architecture by the Bohras created heated

debate in Cairo and was denounced by many scholars of heritage preser-

vation.3 These specialists sought to preserve the “authenticity” of the old

core of the city, continuing a project started in the nineteenth century,

and the interventions by the Bohras disrupted this vision. The Bohras

freely borrowed elements from one structure to apply to another; they

introduced new materials; and they removed parts of structures that did

not fit their imagining of Fatimid architecture.4 Ironically, in so doing, they

borrowed heavily from Orientalist reconstructions of buildings of this

time period. In essence, they sought to redefine and categorize Fatimid

architecture as a style that represented them not only historically, but also

in the present. But the story of the Bohras in late-twentieth-century Cairo

cannot be fully understood without a reflection on events that occurred a

millennium earlier in the heart of the Middle East. Because of al-Hakim’s

significance to their faith, the Bohras’ most important project was the

restoration of the mosque bearing his name. The story of the Fatimid ruler

al-Hakim, as such, starts much earlier.

With the collapse of the central military authority of the Abbasids, who

ruled from Baghdad, a series of local dynasties rose to lead the Islamic

world. North African principalities were among the first to gain autonomy

in the far-flung and loosely controlled empire. In Tunisia, the movement

against the Abbasid caliphs, who were perceived as decadent, reached

its peak when Sa‘id ibn Husain al-Mahdi, an alleged descendant of the



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Prophet (through his daughter Fatima—hence the name Fatimid) broke

away from the empire and established a Shi’ite caliphate.5

The Fatimids were intent on moving eastward, possibly to challenge

the Sunni Abbasids. After successive attempts, their movement gathered

enough momentum to permit the conquest of Egypt. Al-Mu‘izz, who ruled

from 953 to 975 as the fourth Fatimid caliph, appointed Jawhar al-Siqilli

(928–992) to lead his forces in the Egyptian campaign. Jawhar, whose full

name literally means “the Sicilian jewel,” was of Christian slave origin.6

At the time, Egypt was ruled by the Ikhshidi dynasty (935–969), another

feudalistic princedom with provincial autonomy from the Abbasids. In

969 the Fatimids easily defeated the Ikhshidis and marched through the

cities of Fustat and al-Qata‘i.7

Almost immediately after his arrival, Jawhar began to search for a

site to garrison his troops. According to at least one account, he main-

tained ideas pertaining to the construction of a new capital based on

what al-Mu‘izz envisioned as the seat of his caliphate and as a rival to

Baghdad.8 Jawhar established the new city on the only available site in

the area, to the north of the existing settlements.9 Seen in context, this

city would add to a sequence of existing cities that bordered the Nile.

Continuing what began with Fustat in 640, followed by al-Askar in 750

and al-Qata‘i in 870, the new site of Fatimid Cairo would extend along a

north–south urban axis and would tie the new city to its predecessors.

Jawhar’s first step was to establish the boundaries of a city wall, locate its

gates, and start construction of two major buildings—the caliphal palace

and the mosque.10 Legend has it that on the following day when a delega-

tion from Fustat arrived to welcome Jawhar, they found the foundation

for the entire city had already been marked.11 Chronicles dating from

the period contain no mention of architects or builders involved in this

process, leading us to believe that Jawhar’s army may have included indi-

viduals with specialized skills.

Maqrizi (1364–1442), the renowned medieval historian of Cairo, relates

that Jawhar initially planned for the city to follow the shape of a square with

sides roughly 1,100 meters long. This defined a total area of about 138 hect-

ares, of which 28 hectares were allotted to the caliphal palace, and another



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N

BAB ZUWAYLA

AL-AQMARMOSQUE

TALA'IMOSQUE

5

3

1 2

WESTPALACE

4

BAB AL-FUTUH

AL-HAKIM/ AL-ANWAR

MOSQUE

BAB AL-NASR

AL-AZHARMOSQUE

BAYN AL-QASRAYN

EASTPALACE

BUSTAN AL-KAFURI

4

4

4

4

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

BUSTAN AL-MA'SHUQ

BABYLON

AL-HABASHLAKE

MOSQUE OF 'AMR

FUSTAT (640)

MOSQUE OF IBN TULUN

AL-QATA'I (870)

AL-HAMRA'

AL-QAHIRA (969)

RIVER BANK AT THE TIME OF THE FATIMIDS

PRESENT DAY RIVER BANK

RIVER NILE

FUTUREISLAND OF RAWDAH

0 500 m 1000 m

AL-MAQS

AL-FILLAKE

FATIMIDAL-QAHIRA

Figure 4.1 Map of Fustat, al-Askar, al-Qata‘i, and al-Qahira. (Key: 1. guesthouse; 2. minister’s house; 3. stables; 4. gates; 5. residential quarters of different tribes.)



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28 hectares to the existing Ikhshidi gardens, al-Bustan al-Kafuri, and other

public squares, or rahbahs. The remaining area was assigned as khitat, or

districts, to the twenty or so different groups making up the army.12 Jawhar

may have consulted with astrologers before deciding on the location of the

town, if not also the date for executing his plan. Several sources relate that

the town was later called al-Qahira after a bright star that an astrologer

observed in the sky that night.13 Maqrizi reports that Jawhar began laying

out the town on the evening of a Friday in the Arabic month of Sha‘aban

in 969. Anxious to implement the project, Jawhar may have ordered his

soldiers to carry on throughout the night. The following morning he came

to realize that the city outline was built inconsistently, such that the result

was a slightly distorted rectangle. According to Maqrizi, Jawhar decided

not to correct it, saying that “it was laid out in a holy night and that its

irregularity must have been caused by a divine logic.”14

It is unlikely that the plan could have been so severely distorted during

its execution that the envisioned square became a rectangle. Indeed, the

sides of the city carried the proportion of 2:3, one not likely to have been

achieved by mistake. The original plan, nevertheless, continues to be the

subject of controversy. Some believe that Caliph al-Mu‘izz designed the

city himself and provided Jawhar with a precise plan with specific dimen-

sions and a proposed procedure for execution.15 Others suggest that the

plan of Cairo was initially envisioned along the lines of a Roman castrum.16

Still, other scholars maintain that the plan simply replicated elements of

the town of al-Mahdiyah in Tunisia.17

Whether it was modeled after a Roman castrum or a North African

town, Jawhar started the city by building a palace, a mosque, and a

perimeter wall of mud bricks. He originally called the city al-Mansuriya,

after a town built by al-Mu‘izz’s father in Tunisia. Many of the gates of the

new city also appear to have been named after the gates of that city in

Tunisia—evidence supporting the view that the city was modeled after its

North African counterpart.18

Four years after the conquest, Caliph al-Mu‘izz arrived at the new city,

declared it the capital of his caliphate, and changed its name to al-Qahira.19

The name was later distorted by Italian travelers to al Cairo, hence its



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current English name, Cairo.20 From the beginning, Caliph al-Mu‘izz

was intent on creating an imperial capital with an immediate sense of

history. From Tunisia he brought three coffins housing the remains of his

predecessors and ordered their burial in a site close to his palace. Upon

his arrival, the caliph led the first public prayer, prefacing Cairo’s role as

the religious and intellectual capital of the Muslim world in the years to

come.21 To emphasize the change of dynasty, the Abbasid caliph’s name

was eliminated from all official records and prayers, and a new coin-

age was struck. In place of black, the color of the Abbasids, white was

pronounced as the new official color of the territory. For the first time in

a thousand years, Egypt became a sovereign state headed by one person,

the Fatimid caliph, who was its spiritual and political leader.22

Maqrizi’s description of the urban elements that made up the Fatimid

city exceeds a couple of hundred pages, of which a considerable portion

is devoted to its palaces. He reports that Jawhar and his forces camped

to the south of the proposed site and started the construction of the main

caliphal palace in 969.23 In this account, the palace included several large

halls and opened out to the rest of the city through nine gates. It was

bordered by the city’s central square, or maydan, which was later bounded

by the addition of another caliphal structure, often called the Western

Palace. The maydan acted as a place where the caliph would review his

troops. Indeed, it was a monumental space that could accommodate ten

thousand soldiers.24 The caliphal palace was separated from the rest of

the city by open spaces and gardens. To its west was al-Bustan al-Kafuri,

a large garden established as a retreat during the time of the Ikhshidis.

This garden was walled and connected by underground tunnels leading

to the palace, and in the early days was exclusively reserved for use by

the caliph and his family.25 Rahbahs on the northern and eastern sides

separated the caliphal palace from a guesthouse and the city’s residen-

tial neighborhoods, respectively. Although the spatial configuration of

the caliphal palace appears to be irregular, it nevertheless emulated the

concept of isolating the caliph from his surroundings and placing him at

the center of the settlement, a precedent set in the first planned Islamic

capital, Baghdad.



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Figure 4.2 The Mosque of al-Azhar.



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Concomitant to the construction of the palace, Jawhar decided to

build a congregational Friday mosque to the south of the palace. Initially

named Jami’ al-Qahira, the mosque soon acquired its present name,

al-Azhar—which both means “the magnificent” and is the masculine

form of the honorific title Zahra, which refers to the Prophet’s daughter

Fatima. The construction of the mosque began in 970 and was completed

three years later. Al-Mu‘izz led the first Friday prayer and delivered the

khutbah sermon on the first Friday of the Arab month of Ramadan in 972.26

The original core of the mosque of al-Azhar is today buried under

centuries of additions and alterations.27 The original structure was built

of brick, following a simple rectangular plan. One would enter from the

northwest through a projecting portal next to a minaret. Inside was the

open courtyard, or sahn, which featured porticos along both sides. Facing

the portal, on the opposite side of the courtyard, was the entry to the

hypostyle hall—a hall with a flat ceiling supported by evenly spaced

columns—which functioned as the sanctuary, or haram. This covered

prayer hall consisted of four naves and a transept that terminated in

a dome in front of the mihrab on the qibla. Some 150 years after the

construction of the mosque, during Caliph al-‘Aziz’s reign, a new aisle

with keel-shaped arches was added all around the courtyard to unify the

appearance of the mosque and respond to the social needs of the commu-

nity.28 The central transept of the covered prayer hall, indicating the qibla

(in this case, southeast toward the holy city of Mecca), was made promi-

nent by the addition of a tall screen wall from the courtyard to the prayer

hall. Several domes were added to the mosque in later years.

In its early years al-Azhar served as the only congregational mosque

in the city.29 In 988 the first organized school began there, with thirty-five

scholars housed nearby to propagate Ismaili doctrine and train the faith’s

missionaries. However, al-Azhar lost its status as the Friday mosque to

the al-Hakim mosque after the fall of the Fatimid dynasty to the Ayyu-

bids, Sunni Muslims of Kurdish origin who banned Shi’ite doctrines and

neglected the building.30 The layout of the city of al-Mu‘izz, at least during

its first decade, seems to have been a regular grid with wide streets and

large open squares. The city was well fortified, and the Fatimids built most



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of their buildings inside its walls. In other early Muslim settlements in the

region, the cities grew around a core, which was usually a mosque—such

as the mosque of ‘Amr in Fustat, or the mosque of Ibn Tulun in al-Qata‘i.

But in Fatimid Cairo this was not the case: palaces were designed to

occupy its center, and the mosque of al-Azhar was located off to one side.

The central location of the palace no doubt influenced the internal struc-

ture of the city and, accordingly, its streets. The major streets of Fatimid

Cairo made up a simple network that tied the palace to the city gates. The

area between the Eastern Palace (972) and the Western Palace (975–996)

has survived to the present, at least in name, as Bayn al-Qasrayn, which

means “between the two palaces” or “Palace Walk.”31

Although it was al-Mu‘izz’s vision that brought Fatimid Cairo into exis-

tence, al-Mu’izz did not live long enough to enjoy his new capital. When

he died in 975, his son, al-‘Aziz, took over the caliphate and ruled for more

than twenty years, until 996. ‘Aziz was a great builder, and during his

reign several important buildings were added to Fatimid Cairo. Among

these were the Western Palace and the al-Hakim mosque.

The small Western Palace, also known as Qasr al-Bahr because it

fronted one of the canals connecting to the Nile, came to assume great

significance in the city. Initially built as a residence for one of ‘Aziz’s

daughters, it defined the central maydan of Fatimid Cairo and separated

it from the caliphal gardens. When al-Mustansir, who ruled for fifty-eight

years, ascended to the Fatimid caliphate in 1036, he refurbished the

palace in preparation for making it the official residence of the deposed

Abbasid caliph. At the time Mustansir sought to bestow greater legiti-

macy on his own caliphate by offering to relocate the collapsed Abbasid

caliphate from Baghdad.32

During late Fatimid times, the main artery of the city connected Bab

Zuwayla in the south to Bab al-Futuh in the north, passing through the

Bayn al-Qasrayn maydan.33 Entering the city through the southern gate

and walking north, a visitor would have passed the al-Azhar mosque on

the right before reaching Bayn al-Qasrayn. After passing this maydan,

one would have encountered the mosque of al-Aqmar and finally the

mosque of al-Hakim before exiting the city through its northern gate.



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Documents

STR. Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Townprzetargi.adm.uj.edu.pl/pliki_z_formularza/zalacznik4522.pdf · Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Town. ... Standing atop its short minaret